Jurors' discussions of a defendant's history of child abuse and alcohol abuse in a capital case

Case law for the sentencing phase of capital cases requires that jurors be allowed to consider factors such as a defendant's history of child abuse and/or alcohol abuse to lessen the severity of sentences. It is possible, however, that not all jurors consider such factors as mitigating evidence and might instead perceive them as aggravating factors (i.e., factors that justify a more severe sentence). In this dissertation, I proposed and tested a novel theoretical model designed to explain the psychological processes underlying jurors' discussions during deliberations about child abuse and alcohol abuse – factors presented by the defense in a simulated capital sentencing case. To test this model, I documented the nature of jurors' deliberation discussions about child abuse and alcohol abuse by coding the extent to which jurors used them as mitigating factors, used them as aggravating factors, or argued that they should be ignored. I used attribution theory as a framework to understand the underlying psychological determinants of jurors' use of these factors by coding the extent to which jurors rendered controllable/uncontrollable and stable/unstable attributions regarding the defendant's history of child abuse and alcohol abuse. Jurors were more likely to discount child abuse and alcohol abuse as mitigating factors or even use them against the defendant as aggravating factors than they were to use them as mitigating factors. In addition, jurors made more controllable than uncontrollable attributions regarding child abuse, and more stable than unstable attributions regarding both child abuse and alcohol abuse. Finally, I tested for effects of juror individual difference factors (i.e., attitudes toward the death penalty, political orientation, and gender) on jurors' attributions and on their tendency to argue that these factors should be ignored, used as mitigators, or used as aggravators. The more jurors supported the death penalty, the more they argued that child abuse and alcohol abuse should be ignored as mitigators or used as aggravators, and the more controllable and stable attributions they made regarding these factors. Implications and conclusions are discussed.